by the new and unusual spectacle,
by the bewilderment of seeing for the first time what he had so often
heard of, the judge on the bench, the wigged barristers below, the one
who was speaking, so different from any other public speaker Philip had
ever heard, addressing not the assembly, but the smaller circle round
him, interrupted by other voices: the accused in his place and the
witness--standing there more distinctly at the bar than the culprit
was--bearing his testimony before earth and heaven, with the fate
of another hanging on his words. The boy was so full of the novel
sight--which yet he had heard of so often that he could identify every
part of it, and soon perceived the scope of what was going on--that he
did not at first listen, so full was he of the interest of what he saw.
The imperturbable judge, grave, letting no emotion appear on his face;
the jury, just the reverse, showing how this and that piece of evidence
affected them; the barristers who were engaged, so keenly alive to
everything, starting up now and then when the witness swerved from the
subject, when the opposition proposed a leading question, or one that
was irrelevant to the issue; the others who were not "in it," as Simmons
said, so indifferent; and then the spectators who had places about or
near the central interest. Philip saw, with a sudden leap of his heart,
the ladies of the theatre and park, the witch and the girl with the keen
eyes, in a conspicuous place; the old lady, as he called her, full of
movement and gesture, making signs to others near her, keeping up an
interrupted whispering, the girl at her side as impassive as the judge
himself. And then Pippo's roving eye caught a figure seated among the
barristers with an opera-glass, which made his heart jump still more.
Was that the man? He had, at the moment Philip perceived him, his
opera-glass in his hand: a tall man leaning back with a look of
interest, very conspicuous among the wigged heads about him, with grey
hair in a mass on his forehead as if it had grown thin and had been
coaxed to cover some denuded place, and a face which it seemed to Philip
he had seen before, a face worn--was it with study, was it with trouble?
Pippo knew of no other ways in which the eyes could be so hollowed out,
and the lines so deeply drawn. A man, perhaps, hard worn with life and
labor and sorrow. A strange sympathy sprang up in the boy's mind: he was
sure he knew the face. It was a face full of r